@divegeester said
The bottom line in all your waffle KellyJay, is that you believe that an invisible entity made everything happen, but you have no proof.

No Christians have proof. There isn’t any.

Grow up dude; just believe and live it yourself.

The bottom line for KJ and many other Chrtistians I might add, is: they believe that belief matters, that God is going to judge what is in their minds.

It is a bizarre dogma, that only people who have a certain set of beliefs are going to heaven and that everyone else is going to hell in a handbasket.

@kellyjay said
You have to believe that what you are doing will show you what you are looking for, if that wasn’t true would you do it?

I've tried all kinds of things without believing anything about them in advance.

@PettyTalk

I concur. Greek philosophy made Christianity exportable to Rome and gentiles generally; it would not have survived without Greek philosophy, it would have died out, as did the Essenes, Manichaeanism, Gnosticism, and probably hundreds of other sects we never heard of.

@spruce112358 said
The OP is about the value of religion/faith/belief, not about the value of science. The value of science is well-established.

Scientists like to say, "Whether human life has value is not a scientific question." Then you ask them what they do and they say, "I conduct research to preserve and extend human life."

Me: "Do you believe in your work?"
Them: "Yes, very mu ...[text shortened]... your relgion."
Them: "NO I'M NOT RELIGIOUS I HATE THE INVISIBLE SKY BEING THAT'S NOT SCIENCE"

🙂

Why this insistence that belief is religion? Belief is peculiarly Christian. Pagans and Buddhists don't care what people believe; paganism and Buddhism are religions focused on practises, not beliefs. 'But you have to believe in what you're doing to practise anything.' No, one doesn't. Buddhism is quite explicit about this: it does not matter what one believes, you can even believe Buddhism is bunk; all you have to do is practise the meditation exercises, and you'll eventually get it. Even if you don't believe meditation will get you there. 'But you still have to believe Buddhism is the right thing you should be practising.' No, you don't even have to believe that.

@the-gravedigger said
Seems to be a lot more of them around.
A woman I know told me she was a white witch.
I replied all witches say that as there is no independent body that declares if witches are white or black.
No doubt she has put a hex on me. 😆 😆

All cats look gray in moonlight.

@the-gravedigger said
Poor benighted swine.

Pity the void.

@torunn said
I would do many things differently but I was too young to know about parenthood. I would have applied rules and authority - Sweden during 60's and 70's was against all kinds of authority, both at home and at school, and we have never quite recovered from that. 🙂

Parenting is too important to be left to young people. Young people should be forbidden to make babies (let them have as much sex as they want, with contraceptives).

Children need to learn limits. They must be taught to respect rules and authority, but without violence or physical punishment. Otherwise they grow up socio-paths, like Donald Trump.

Typewriters. TippEx (white correction paint).

@divegeester said
I don’t have children, chose not to, can’t stand them tbh. I might have felt differently about my own, but looking at other people’s I am just relieved to not have them.

I look around at my wider family and everyone with kids is stressed out of their box, frantic with worry and financially strapped. Even in their thirties with their own kids they are still leaching of ...[text shortened]... s.

I’ve heard it said more than once “if I had my time over I wouldn’t have kids”.

Thoughts?

If I had known then what I know now, I would certainly have done some things differently. But I would still have had kids (2, adopted).

@torunn said
When you choose to have children, you also choose how to raise them. You choose to let life continue in a new generation. Children mean sacrifices, animals sacrifice whatever it takes to help their offspring survive.
The bonus of having children is the grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. 🙂

Parents don't raise their kids; it is the parents who grow up by this process. Their kids grow up later.

@spruce112358 said
But believing your life has value and believing it should continue may increase the likelihood that you get to reproductive age so that you DO in fact pass on your genes. Whether you believe this "Because God" or "Just Because" makes little difference. Not believing, though, may place you in evolutionary jeopardy.

Believing that you are breathing adds nothing to breathing, but believing that you should go ON breathing could be important.

Scientists believe things, but that doesn’t mean that science is a kind of a religion. Science is about facts and how things work. Religion is about values and mankind’s wherefore.

Are you one of these people who think that science is just an alternative belief system with nobody in place of God?

@spruce112358 said
Are the beliefs that "humanity must try to understand the universe" and "humanity has value" and "my life has a purpose" scientific or religious beliefs, in your view?

Because I think even scientists sometimes need to believe that their lives have a purpose. Especially when contemplating the infinite vastness of space.

You say we cannot believe something 'because we want to'. But do we not choose to believe that we matter?

"Humanity must try to understand the universe" is not a belief in the sense in which some people believe, for example, that God became man and died for man's sins. In fact, I don't know anyone who believes that "humanity must try to understand the universe." Trying to understand how nature works has an obvious evolutionary survival value, in that people who don't understand how really basic things function, such has how pray-animals migrate and which plants are poisonous and so on, don't live long enough to pass on their genes. Trying to understand the world we live in is just something we do, like breathing, it's not about believing. Believing that God became man and died for mankind's sins has no evolutionary value; there is no natural selection pressure to believe this and pass on one's genes by virtue of having believed just this (rather than some other, possibly erroneous, belief). Whereas, if you erroneously believe hemlock to be not poisonous, it has an obvious survival dis-advantage.

Similarly, it is weird to talk of believing that "humanity has value" and "my life has a purpose." Your life has a purpose or it doesn't -- your believing it has a purpose or no purpose adds nothing to its having or not having a purpose. Your purpose, if you have one, is not to believe something. It's rather like breathing: my believing I'm breathing adds nothing to my breathing.

@fartacus said
Right.

So why didn't he become a dictator when he was in office?

He tried in 2020 and failed. In 2021 he posted that the Constitution should be put aside to return him to power.

He's going to try again in 2024.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Despite telling their followers not to bother going to college etc around 1914, due to Jesus's imminent return, they later made the weak claim Jesus actually just ruled in heaven since 1914 and later still that this prediction (of his return to Earth) was not a prediction at all, just a speculation.

Such is the fate of a doomsday cult.

'He's here now; he's waiting for the right moment to reveal himself.'


😆

@great-big-stees said
The only thing I cling on to is hope.👍

Then you’re clinging to Pandora’s box. I don’t recommend it.